A Brief History of Video Games: The Arcade Years: Part 9

Berserk was not really a videogame. I know some of you are insisting that yes, it was, seeing as how you played it, but you are wrong. Berserk was actually a Kafka-esque commentary on modern life. Think about it.

You are trapped in an endless maze full of lethal, but not particularly bright robots who are trying to shoot you. Evil Otto, an unstoppable killing machine, always eventually appears and chases you relentlessly, forever. Your only hope is to keep running, but eventually you will falter and fail. This is a not only a brilliant commentary on life, but also an amazing allegory for high school. Moving on.

Next: Tempest!

A Brief History of Video Games: The Arcade Years: Part 8

Berserk, also introduced in 1980, was one of the first games to include an actual voice synthesizer. Stop the Humanoid! and Intruder Alert still make me smile, recalling the good-old-days, when I was trapped in a maze and robots were trying to kill me. Actually, it was school and jocks, but you get the picture.

In Berserk, you controlled a little humanoid with no neck. You ran around a simple maze, trying to escape while robots tried to kill you. Everything was lethal, from touching the walls, running into a robot, or being shot. The robots, it should be said, were not particularly bright (not unlike the jocks). They would often walk into the walls and shoot each other, sort of if Laurel and Hardy were controlling them. If you cleared all the robots or the timer ran out, Evil Otto, a smiling, bouncing ball would appear and attack you. Evil Otto would indiscriminately kill anything it touched, including the robots.

Next: More Berserk!